The cycle of clay life
A piece of long writing summarising my days with the women potters in Ìganran
Get cosy as this is a longer piece I wrote on my last day in Ikise. Words flowing as I took pen to the page, processing the time I spent with Ìyá Lẹ́kàn and her sisters in Ìganran.
As the closeness of our destination is made evident by the pots resting on the side of the road, busking in the sun, I get a bit nervous. I have —to a degree— lived this before. What will happen this time? Will they like me? Will I have the chance to learn loads? What are we going to find?
We descend Mr Austin’s van, the afternoon heat welcoming us as a woman tells us where we need to go. A porch, so to speak. The porch where magic happens, or at least, most of it. A group of women, who I will then learn are sisters, are sitting underneath the metal-sheet roof surrounded by pots. Tons of pots.
Ìyá Lẹ́kàn greets us. She clearly is the one in charge of such visits, the one the G.A.S. team already has a relationship with. Conversations in Yoruba I don’t understand follow and someone fetches a bench for us to sit down and watch. To admire this old making way. So old, so ancient, that when I ask, they don’t know when it all started. I have so much to ask and the language barrier is always frustrating. I want to develop a bond, to be able to really get it. I am thrown back to the days in Tanou Sakassou (Ivory Coast), when the interpreter would miss things, things that I would nevertheless pick upon since I could understand French.
Here we are again, now Yoruba is the wall, but this time experience helps me. So when Adekunle starts talking about fathers and forefathers to explain to me how they have learnt their craft, I have the feeling that that is not right. Is that something you have added? Or did she indeed talk about men? He asks again and I was right. The traditore in the traduttore had done his part. It is the women in their family who had passed their knowledge. As the chats continue, even if I don’t understand, I pay close attention to the conversation, trying to catch words I don’t know. Gestures that might reveal key information. Messages in their body language.
This also is tough, though. I want to buy clay from them and when the matter is raised, Ìyá Lẹ́kàn’s answer’s tone makes me think it is a solid no, have I offended her on day one? She sounded upset, clapping her hands in what I have now learnt to be a very Nigerian way, the back of one hand hitting against the palm of the other. Yet, everyone laughs. Sorry, what was that? Of course I can have clay, what a question!
Our first day in Ìganran sees us seeing how they make. A good dozen pots later, we —Nathalie, the other G.A.S. resident with me and I— are given the chance to make our own. To show if we have registered all the well-choreographed movements we have been witnessing since we arrived, a good hour ago, the dexterity of Ìyá Lẹ́kàn’s hands after decades of being one with this clay dug just behind where they make.
I am to go first and they give me a wrap so that I don’t get dirty. She puts it on like a Yoruba woman, they comment. I can see I am already winning these women’s hearts and there’s nothing I want more. I go for it, carefully imitating these steps and movements I have seen just now and also in other places before, for this knowledge knows no borders, and while so much is specific to location and family practices (the decoration, tools and firing processes, for example), there are some ‘basics’ that are shared.
I ask if I am doing it alright and they praise my making and cheer me up. As I continue, I am stopped at different times to show me how to go on. All in all, my pot looks fab and they joke that in a week I could be a pro, which I love. I smile joyfully while they all clap as I finish and stand up.
The following days I have the chance to engage with the different stages of the cycle of clay life, the firing of the pots that were being made when we first came being the next step.
Such a wonderful sight that of the firing preparation —two women packing hundreds of pots. I keep asking, in awe and disbelief, can you fit them all?! Of course we can, says Ìyá Lẹ́kàn. I repeat ‘all’ in Yoruba, a new word I have just learnt. Ìyá Lẹ́kàn repeats ‘all’ in English after translating our brief interaction to her sister who is on the other side of the circular construction that keeps growing minute after minute, one pot at a time. Everything is studied, an engineering masterclass. From the fired-clay props on which the first layer of pots sits that allow for wood to go underneath it all while stopping the pots at the bottom from getting burnt. To which pots go where. The kolo —piggy banks— being the smallest of the bunch fill the gaps. The charcoals go first, the other cooking and water vessels sit towards the top and the outer circles, added during the final building stages once the desired height has been reached. I cannot believe my eyes.
I am doing nothing but taking photos, videos and sitting on a stool from time to time; but I’m exhausted. Over two hours go by and other women start coming to help fetch wood and place it around the beautiful clay mountain waiting to go in flames in a moment’s time. Another well calculated act, that of choosing and placing the wood so that they fire does its thing as they like.
The fact that it takes so long to prepare the fire to then, I am told, only burn for about 30 minutes, reminds me of a laborious meal. The amount of time and the dedication that goes onto the preparation while the enjoyment goes by so fast. After all, it is cooking that we are talking about, in this case, delicious vessels made out of clay that will see their initial appearance turn red with touches of black in the places where the flames have kissed them, too close for too long, a skin mark for life.
The fire goes on, kerosene inflaming the wood. We can see the first flames dancing inside. The bigger planks that frame the pile get on fire a bit later, quickly increasing the temperature of the scene. Yet I cannot leave. I find fire too mesmerising to turn my back on it, I want to be as close to it as I can. To hear it, smell it, look at it, get lost in it. I had never seen an open fire like that before, not in real life.
Ìyá Lẹ́kàn, her daughter and her sister keep going back and forth to add bits of wood when they see an opening in their construction that might thwart the progress of the firing and the final result. Once the fire is subduing, quietening down, it is time for the fourth element to make its appearance and do its part: water. Some of the planks of wood that have fallen of the fire structure —now as black as a day’s darkest night— are put off with buckets of water the women have collected from the closest tap. Some of the pots are fished out of the fire using a long bamboo stick, perhaps to stop them from falling down and breaking into pieces, not a fair ending after what they have just endured.
We have to leave as the sun is setting, leaving the women at it, almost done with the day’s task.
When we come back, all those pots we left in flames are now sitting on the side of the road, the Ọjà Ọba, I call it, The Queens’ Market. A van filled to the rim with pots leaves Ìganran shortly after we arrive, taking them to a store, I guess, to then be taken to a new home, their new life about to begin as they leave their birth place behind.
And just like that, the cycle of clay life starts again.
Today we are collecting and preparing clay for which we don’t have to go far. No shop, no online delivery. The mine is just behind the porch, behind the family house. The mine is their own land and the women are already on it, hoe at hand, digging.
I help throughout the entire process for I really want to feel what it is to get clay. I am so used to the effortless pottery life, either buying the already-processed clay or foraging small amounts. This is serious business and I want to dirty my hands. Something the women appreciate and admire which results in them labelling me their ‘number one’, the only visitor they’ve had so far who has worked this hard. And what can I say? I do deserve the nickname as I even take my shoes off when the clay is wet, just like them, to continue hitting the hoe against the soil. My feet are happy. My arms knackered. Ìyá Lẹ́kàn tells me to stop, to pass her the hoe and so we go on, in turns, getting little moments of rest. I bet she is thankful for this is so tough. These women’s strength… I bow to them.
As the clay is ready to be piled up, we sit on low stools, side by side and at unison we grab big chunks of clay with our hands, adding it to the growing mountain behind us. A mountain that will be covered today and then moved to the porch, the studio, tomorrow for the making to commence again. The next firing will be at the end of the month, in only a couple of weeks’ time, which means these women make so so fast.
However repetitive you might think it is to see someone making the same thing over and over again, the same steps time after time, it is not at all like that. I lose track of time on our next visit, sitting next to Ìyá Lẹ́kàn as she makes one pot after the other. It feels like a meditation to me. And Jonn, the ethno-botanist who is now with me at the Farm and who’s tagged along today, describes it as therapy. Our hearts are content.
On the fifth and last day, it is time to show them the project I have prepared to document our time together, an archive of their practice. I want them to see it, to approve it, to be proud of it. Perhaps they have never seen photos and videos of them like this before. And before the rest of the ‘world’ sees it, I want their blessing.
Their children, the girls, continue making while they also go to school and university. They study art or otherwise to keep widening their minds. Still, they will come back, Ìyá Lẹ́kàn tells us, and work at the pottery to continue the family’s practice and history. I hope that despite the ‘normal’ desire that younger generations everywhere tend to have to break away from their parents’ lives, move to cities in search of a ‘modern, better’ life, the children of these women do come back and their family’s craft is not lost any time soon.
I buy two pots, a womb vessel as I call them and a plate. We hug and say our good-byes. I feel sad and I think Ìyá Lẹ́kàn feels a little bit sad too, as she asks me to not forget about her when I go back. We exchange numbers so that we can stay in touch. I will cherish these days with them and I hope that, not too soon, not too far in time, I will be back.
Obinrin àmó
You can check out the multi-media, multi-sensorial archive of my days in Ìganran here on my website.
On March 20, I will give an online talk with G.A.S. Foundation, during which I will talk a bit more about my days with these women potters. I will share details once they are ready both here and on my Instagram feed.